the last two weeks of August

A few years ago, our good, and now departed friend Bob Eschrich stopped by the house with an antique chair in the back of his truck.....that he gave me.  It was missing the seat and back and it sat in our garage for a couple of years.  Then, I moved it into the house where it sat for another year or so.  I finally made a template for the seat and back and gave it to Bob to cut them out in wood.  About a year later, he got that done and then, again the chair sat at the end of the hallway waiting to be finished.  Well, it is now done.  The fabric was complements of Emily - some she bought as possible material for her wedding.  I treated the wood with some Old English polish.  I found the perfect color of braided trim on-line.  I am very happy with the results.

 Here is how it looks in the hallway

Thursday afternoons are my new pottery days and last Thursday I started a new 6-lesson session and collected all the pottery from the past four months work.  16 pieces.  I would have had 17 but one got some water damage as it sat on the shelf awaiting glazing.  See the yellow pie plate I made in the middle?  

 
 The color is not great since I photographed under poor artificial light but the outside of these three bowls is yellow with green interior. 
 

 The BIG news of the week is that Trissy is NOT dead......yet. 

 
 But, last Sunday, she took a turn for the worse, particularly in walking.  Suddenly, she could hardly keep her already arthritic legs from slipping on the wood floors.  Tuesday, she stopped eating.  She could barely be coaxed through her morning walk.  I thought "Oh, boy.  she is in pain.  Time to put her out of her misery".  I made a vet appointment for Thursday morning and Steven, Elise, and Sarah all made accommodations to be there.  And, then, Wednesday evening, Steven brought over her "last meal" of chicken tenders - which Trissy devoured.  It must have been the miraculous healing powers of that meat because the next morning, she wolfed down her breakfast, she looked more perky than she had in days, she enthusiastically went on her morning walk.
 
 
  I called the vet and said "never mind".  And Trissy has been back to her old, regular 15 1/2 year old self ever since!  She has a regular, long ago scheduled vet appointment for tomorrow and we'll see what happens after that....

 Speaking of dogs, we are grand-dog sitting this weekend for Sarah.  Not good old calm Bones.  We have never-stop, full of insane energy, ADHD Lily. 

See what we did to keep her from going downstairs.... a combination of highchair and storage box.  And, the couch was moved a foot over to be in front of the spindled opening in the half-wall

 

Summer continues to be a presence but we got a tease of autumn one morning.  The air hinted of crispness with a heavy dew on the roses

 Oakland Park has a new bench installed by the pond in memory of our neighbor, Walter Shoupe.  

This past week, I had two chances to work in storage sheds in Missouri August humidity.  Yay.  Wednesday it was with Katherine Eschrich as she emptied the last dozen or so boxes from a large storage unit she and Bob rented near their home.  Saturday, it was with the missionaries, Kari Bailey, Traci Downs, and Steve in the Refugee and Immigration Services storage warehouse where they keep their donations.  It was full of boxes and bags of household goods donations tossed everywhere among the donated furniture so we went through and sorted everything.  We got it all done in less than two hours. 

Mid-Missouri Community Orchestra had their first rehearsal of the season yesterday afternoon.  We have two new musicians - a trumpet player and a baritone sax player!  I am back behind the baton because our director from last year (when I got to play viola) had to step down due to crazy life changes.

Movie Report:  Midnight Special - a sci-fi movie that, in spite of a very a lame title, was very good.

Love and Mercy - a biopic about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.  It was very well done and quite interesting.

Lego Movie - I had to re-watch this and it was just as funny as the first time.

Oblivion -   Elise owns the soundtrack which we listened to on our trip out west so I had to re-watch it.  I loved it the second time.

Cello students old and new

Last Sunday afternoon, I went from having 15 music students to 14.  That is because Ethan Forte (don't you LOVE that last name) performed his senior recital and, in a couple of weeks, will be starting  at MU with a full-ride tuition scholarship in composition.  I will miss his lessons.  He was so talented!


 Out of the remaining 14 students, most are cellists.  I have four piano students and one violin student (poor thing). 

The Mid-Missouri Community Orchestra is starting back up later this month.  Last year, I got to play viola as we had Virginia (my dentist) for a conductor.  She LOVED the position and I loved being out of the hot seat.  Alas, she cannot conduct this year so she has passed the baton back to me. Unfortunately, we are losing one of the members of the cello section - Chris Ghan.  He was a former private cello student of mine.  I first started teaching him back when he was a 4th grader in String Project.  I then taught him privately until 2008 when he graduated from high school and went off to college.  When he returned to MU for graduate work, I recruited him for MMCO.  Now he leaves for Denver for doctorate work in religious studies.  He and his parents came for dinner Friday night.  One last photo with Chris.



Wednesday afternoon we had a really gully washer but look what came at the end.....

We saw this as Elise and I headed to a choir potluck.  She sings with the Memorial Baptist Choir (because our ward has not had a ward choir for over a year!) and families were invited to the gathering.  Mmmmmm - I ate too much!

I got to see the former MMCO conductor, Virginia, in a professional setting earlier in the day Wednesday as she had to repair a broken filling.  SO glad my mouth was back to normal for the potluck.

I glazed 16 pieces of pottery on Saturday.  I can't wait to pick them up on the 25th and start a new session.  

Movie report:  Steve and I watched Eddie the Eagle on Monday.  Thanks, Steven, for the recommendation.  Elise and I re-watched You've Got Mail on Thursday.  I sure love that movie (and it is so fun to see OLD computer technology).

Noah and Quinn's turn

After camping at the Shut-Ins, we brought Quinn and Noah back to Columbia to spend the week.  Quinn was REALLY unhappy when his mother drove away Monday night.  And, often throughout the week, he would ask for her (some days more than others).  He is also potty training.  BUT, in spite of these little issues, we had a great week together. 

The boys had fun with the sprinkler as I washed down an area rug in our driveway

They helped walk the dogs. Notice that Quinn has a train engine in one hand and a coal car in the other....



On this day, Quinn had to carry the passenger car that Grandpa gave him.  See it in his hand? 



Quinn loved playing with Steve's old HO train cars and track that we set up on the living room floor.  He REALLY LOVED getting to go down to the family room with Grandpa to see the "trains that moved" (Steve's N train set-up)

We went across the street to swim at Oakland Pool







They watched "Cars" on Wednesday, "Ratatouille" on Thursday, and "WALL-e" on Friday.  Aunt Sarah came over Thursday night with the "Peanuts Movie" to watch. 

I invited Isaac, a boy from church who is Noah's age, to come hang out and we all went to the sprayground at Stephens Lake Park. 
 

Then, while Quinn napped (he took GOOD naps every day), Noah and Isaac played Minecraft together.

We had a Lego session one evening....


It was great to have the boys here.  We took them back to St. Louis Saturday morning and we worked at the temple the rest of the day.  That is our week.....

Johnson's Shut-Ins

Monday and Tuesday, August 1st and 2nd, we made our annual trip to Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park.  Both days started with rain but thankfully, the sun peeked out and we had perfect swimming conditions the rest of the day.  Emily came down just for Monday.  She left that night with Lucy, leaving the boys with us.  They slept in the cabin with Steve and me.  Elise and Sarah shared a tent and Steven had his own tent.  It was so fun to have four of our children at the Shut-Ins again! And, I love continuing the tradition with Noah, Lucy and Quinn.

Elise's vacation photos

Kansas 

 

This is a cloud formation in the Denver area.   It looks like a huge fish about to swallow a smaller fish, right?

 
 Driving through the Eisenhower tunnel

 Elise on the hike down in Bryce Canyon.  Before she got sick...

 A cool shot looking up at the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon

Elise met two friends who were also randomly out west.  This woman is a friend from Indiana days.  She was at a conference at Bryce Canyon!

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This is a friend from Syracuse.  We saw her at a Costco in Orem, Utah!  She was out west for a wedding

A cute photo of Beckie with the friendly little pug puppy at the park in Provo

while we were in Grantsville, Elise took the time to drive to nearby Stansbury Park to visit the Morris family.

 

pretty flowers in Yellowstone and a really good shot of a bison

Returning back to normal

And, so now back to our regular life and routine.  I am back working on humanitarian projects.  I made 16 baby hats during the two-week trip. 

 

Now that I have access to a sewing machine again, I have been sewing up lap-quilt tops.  Below are six of them.  I think my favorite is the red and green one.  It all started with the center square that someone else made.   I found it in the unending collection of quilting squares that Laura Jost always has in her garage.  It didn't seem to match anything else she had so I just decided to make it into a quilt all by itself.  I found white and matching red and green fabric in the huge bins Laura has and there you go....
The blue and yellow quilt next to it originated as a pillow sham I made several years ago.  It was eventually replaced by a different bed spread scheme and it seemed silly to just have it folded up in the linen closet so I found some coordinating blue fabric and now it and it's companion sham are lap quilts.





I have continued to make pottery.  I pay for six 2 1/2 hour sessions at a time and, in this set, I have managed to throw 16 pieces.  

Only the front two pieces are mine in the photo below



 
 all but the far right piece are mine.  The weird"bowl" in front is actually a lid to the piece on the left in the top photo.

I will glaze everything in two weeks and start a new set of sessions the end of August.  I am taking requests since I really don't need any more pottery of my own but I don't want to stop going.

Pulling weeds has been my primary yard activity.  Picking has been secondary.  The vegetable garden looks lovely but I have yet to pick many green beans and squash.  The butternut squash plant is trying to take over the yard.  I guess I expected it to grow like a yellow or zucchini squash plant.  Nope.  I am picking tomatoes but I am not overwhelmed with them.  And, we picked about 8 peaches from one of our three trees.  That was it. 

Movie report:  
Flash of Genius - the last of my Greg Kinnear movies.  The story of the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper.
Lady in the Van - Maggie Smith poignant portrayal of a homeless woman
Concussion - This surprised me how good it was.  I put it in my queue on Steven's recommendation and I was going to watch it over two days but ended up staying up late to finish it in one viewing. 
All three films were based upon true events.

Both Steve and I had dentist appointments this month.  Both of us have had to make return visits - Steve to have two of his crowns put back in (!) and me to have a filling re-anchored.

Part of this week, we have had Lucy with us.  Thursday evening, Elise and I drove to the half-way rendezvous at Jonesburg to pick her up and she will be with us until this evening. 

 

 It has been delightful to have her here.   We went swimming Friday morning. 
We picked flowers



She has played dress-up (with stuff she brought).


And, she has dressed up her little toy dog with some of Sadie's clothes. 

 This dog of hers is battery operated and is like a real dog.  Sadie was certainly fooled at first.  Fortunately, she didn't try to attack the toy but she was still really curious about it.  Having just one grandchild here has been easier on Sadie.  And, Lucy has been very sweet with her.  In fact, I think Sadie likes Lucy.  She licked her nose last night and she always wants to be on the bed when I read stories to Lucy every night.  Its pretty cute.....

And, so July 2016 comes to a close.